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Campaign Bible
This page is dedicated to housing information pertaining to all meta-information in the overall campaign, The Elder Dragon Saga. Cast DM: '''Alex Rogier '''Active Players * ''Brandon Camden'' * ''Dakota Gunter'' * ''John McAndrews'' Campaign Narrative Styles and Preferences The Elder Dragon Saga campaign is told in such a way as to try and meet the preferences and expectations of all of the cast. Each member is asked how they prefer to play D&D based on a ranking system from a pool of options. All rankings are not to say that the group doesn't partake in the low ranking elements, but rather that we place focus on the higher ranked elements. The following lists indicate the active interests of the current cast. D&D Pillars: '''Exploration > Social Interaction > Combat '''Narrative Style: '''Novel-esque > Sandbox > Plotless Adventure * Novel-esque: You’re along for the ride like watching a movie that is the DM’s story. This typically has deeply thought out plots that test your character in various ways. Every once in awhile, you engage with the story by influencing certain events, but the plot is always driven in the direction of the DM’s choice. * Sandbox: This is a player-choice-first approach where the DM sets up an environment for you to engage with, but leaves the duty of exploring and advancing any plots to you. * Plotless Adventure: Similar to sandbox, except with a lack of emphasis on story progression. You prefer to treat D&D like a rogue-lite video game where the adventure itself is what you crave over the plot at the end of the road. You likely prefer combat excitement than watching a dramatic plot unfold. '''Narrative Setting: '''Dark > Heroic > Mystery/Grit * Grit (with magic): A campaign that employs medieval realism at every turn while respecting convenience of play. The players play as the few characters in the world that can harness immense magical power. The elements of this campaign emphasize realistic attributes of adventure such as fatigue, wounds and nourishment. It’s likely that the majority of adventures can be one’s last for the dangers are enough to fell a player character. * Heroic: D&D’s intended setting. A multitude of humanoid races coexist with humans in a fantastic world. Adventurers bring magical powers to bear against monstrous threats. These characters have backgrounds that impel them into an adventuring life. These characters are the “heroes” of the campaign. * Mythic: A campaign that draws on the themes and stories of ancient mythology such as Greek, Norse and so on. Stories in this campaign typically invoke the conflicts of pantheons. * Epic: Campaigns that focus on over-the-top fantasy where magic is highly abundant and magical creatures run rampant. A dragonborn paladin riding a wyvern into battle donning heavy plate armor and an ornamental lance enchanted by dryads against a colossal devil with an army of demons is considered “normal”. Epic fantasy typically portrays the conflict between good and evil. * Dark: Campaigns that involve elements of dread and horror such as vampires terrorizing villages, necromancers brewing armies of servants to slay heretics and werewolves that prowl throughout the night. The story elements will likely test the sanity and honor of the characters who partake in the sinister setting * Intrigue: Campaigns that primarily involve political elements of nearby kingdoms. These elements might cause the party to engage in espionage, sabotage and similar cloak-and-dagger activities. Roleplaying and social interaction are much more important than combat. * Mystery: A campaign that puts the characters in the roles of investigators who delve into many unknowns which they’re required to discover for better or for worse. Elements of this campaign typically involve puzzles and problem solving. * War: A war campaign involves a network of warring factions which the characters find themselves flung in the middle of. This setting focuses on the field level of war which the party is likely a soldier for their home kingdom. Combat is highly abundant here which unfold military plots such as logistics, despoilages, supply lines and troop movements. '''Narrative Focus: '''World Lore > Journey > Character Development * Character Development: You relish in the thought of creating a character with many flaws and strengths. You anticipate the DM challenging those traits and coming up with plot hooks for your character to develop themselves as a person. You want your character’s morals, beliefs and faith challenged by the DM’s narrative. You likely enjoy coming up with unresolved plots in your backstory that you want to experience their resolution as you play the character. * World Lore: The most exciting thing to you is exploring the unknown or engaging with the environment around you at the creative pleasure of the DM. You anticipate becoming involved in narrative revolving around NPCs that your character might help them with their troubles. Your interests in the game have your character generally second to the world that they live in. The sound of engaging with an area in the world rich with history and imaginative content is more exciting to you than pursuing unresolved business with your character’s backstory. * Journey: You care very little about your individual character in the sense of exploiting their morals, flaws and strengths. You care most for the act of adventure itself. The notion of a grand-esque backstory holds little interest to you whereas you care more about how your character will interact with their companions and engage in the adventures ahead. You do not measure success by the actions of yourself as an individual, but as a party. '''Plot Scopes: '''Worldly > Planar > Kingdom > Province * Province: The narrative focuses around a highly detailed area that is no larger than a few villages or a main city. External influences can still occur, but you want the story to flesh out within the acute confines of your “home” in a sense. Most narrative will focus around drama of granular, everyday life that will challenge the livelihood and prosperity of your home. * Kingdom: The narrative will take you across several towns and cities which you may engage in wildly different plots due to the diverse nature of the environment. However, the narrative will not expand to a point where you visit the whole world and instead focuses on fragmented zones which generally confine your exploration to. The narrative likely focuses on problems at a city or political level rather than a single person. * Worldly: The narrative has no general focus and is very broad. With a rich world, just about anything can happen within the areas the narrative will take you. In its broadness, the narrative can range from slaying rats in a tavern’s basement to engaging in a war between many kingdoms. The theme of the plots will be driven by whatever area you’re in which could take you anywhere. You may have no preference to world scope or you enjoy exploring a huge, open world. * Planar: The narrative involves entities that span across the cosmos. It’s likely these sorts of plots will revolve around deities or some other very powerful person. You enjoy being thrust into the unknown and dangers of worlds that are foreign to you. You likely don’t like staying in one place for too long and enjoy engaging in wildly different environments in due time. '''Narrative Significance: '''World > Character * Characters: You prefer that the world revolves around you. You want to see your character be in the spotlight in most plots which likely are testing your character in some way. This approach highly relies on the player’s ability to roleplay a character to where the plot can be interesting enough to engage in. It also requires generally more fleshed out characters with their backstory, personality and motivations. You likely want to see your character as “the only hero” that can save the world. * World: You prefer that your character revolves around the world and for the most part, is a mere spec in the infinite cosmos. You recognize that alone, you are relatively powerless. The world around you is harsh and unforgiving, but you relish in that aspect in how your character overcomes those hardships which the narrative forces upon you. You believe the significance of an individual is generally second to the worldly events occurring and feel pride when your character is etched in history because the narrative focus doesn’t set you up to be “the only hero” that can save the world. Character Creation Homebrew Character Sheet Standard Character Sheet '''Boundaries Players are expected to create fantasy characters that stay within certain boundaries for the better of the group. * No extreme obsessions to any degree. Ex: I will never hurt anything, I only care about money, Everything is second to my revenge, etc. These usually promote shtick type of personalities, which are funny for 5 minutes and lose their luster/become one-dimensional when you play them for a year or more. * No Chaotic Evil characters. Self-explanatory * No dramatic prophecies with your character involving deities. You’re not important enough to single-handedly sway the results of a millennia aged war between gods. * No characters starting with great power or renown such as a king of a city, leader of a mercenary band spanning across many regions or a crime lord directing an underground organization. The intent of playing your character is to explore and play out their stepping stones to EARN those advancements over a long journey that will mold them through tempered experiences. * No recluses. You must play a character that talks effectively and desires the company of others. Evil is still fine, but you must make it work with this rule. Required Content '''The following is a list of content which you must come up with before playing any character. * '''Backstory '''Your character must come with a backstory explaining their origins. The level of detail is generally up to you to decide, but it should at least be a couple of paragraphs long and no more than one page. Focus on providing the important details pertaining to their upbringing, any notable events you care to mention and what forms their personality, motives, ideals and beliefs in current day. Feel free to place your character into established world lore or simply create placeholders if you want the DM to fill in the gaps. * '''Personality '''You must come up with 3 positive, 3 neutral and 3 negative personality traits for your character. Each trait you assign must come with at least a one sentence, but no more than one paragraph explanation of why your character is like that. This list can be helpful in determining personality traits. ** '''Flaws and Exploits '''For each of your negative personality traits, you must design a flaw for your character. For example, one might have: “Smoker: I’m slightly addicted to inhaling vapors such as smoking and hemping.” Each flaw you design must have an exploit attached to it which enables you to design interactions with others in ways that you want them to pander to your character. In this example, the smoker flaw might have: “Exploit: anyone who offers or leads me to a pleasurable time with vapors will likely sway me with what they ask of me”. This is not intended to allow your character to be exploited in strictly devious ways, but rather promote in others how you want them to interact with your character. * '''Required Trait '''Every character must take the personality trait: '''Adventurous Curious by nature, danger intrigues you and the sounds of reward inspire your actions. You do not need to explicitly explain why like other traits, but feel free if you want to tie it into something. * Persona 'You must be able to answer the following questions to help form your character's persona in order to create a character that can work with a party effectively. ** A) How would your character get involved in adventures? ** B) How will your character interact with their companions? * '''Downtime '''Every character toils their time away doing something. This can be a hobby or an activity to indulge in something, whatever you decide. The downtime activity should relate to your character's personality which they'll exhibit between adventures. You must define at least one downtime activity that can generally be performed anywhere. You can create more than one if you want, but keep it limited to three for comprehension sake. If you create multiple, you could create activities based on criteria of your location such as doing X when in cities, Y on the road and so on. There will be no mechanical perk to these, but to help everyone know what you’re character should be doing during downtime. '''Ability Scores '''The campaign no longer uses the PHB route of drafting ability scores for new characters. * We no longer roll for our stats and instead have each ability score start at 8. You're provided with 27 points which you point buy with, but no ability score can point buy higher than 17 this way. * Races no longer provide +1 score bonuses and +2 bonuses are reduced to +1. Your character automatically receives an ability score improvement at level 1 (you can pick a feat instead of stat buffs). The intent is to lessen the importance of power gaming behind race decisions and care more about the flavor. ** Humans get to choose one of the variant perks to gain: Ability Score Increase, Skills or Feat * Review the ''Ability Score Revisions page for additional details on things we have changed. '''Lore '''Intelligence gains a sub-concept referred to as Lore which applies bonuses to relative ability checks, some even when Intelligence might not normally apply. The amount of Lore you know is equal to 1 plus your Intelligence ability score modifier. Lore is spent by creatively coming up with a narrow area of knowledge such as Sailing, Engineering, Demonology. etc. You gain a +1 bonus to ability checks as a lore bonus when performing checks related to those areas of knowledge (this cannot stack if multiple lore areas would overlap). Topics should be broad enough that they don’t encapsulate only a couple of skills that exist in the game already and ideally pertain to many skills. '''Hit Point Revision Your maximum hit points is calculated differently than the PHB's method. See the Hit Point Revision page for details. Extra Proficiency '''You begin proficient with an additional number of tools, weapons and languages of your choice equal to your Intelligence ability score modifier. '''Free Tool Proficiency 'You automatically gain one tool proficiency. Every character indulges in some sort of downtime activity and D&D implements that expertise through tools. It feels like the game doesn’t emphasize tool prof enough or provide the avenue to acquire those proficiency. '''Skill Revisions '''The campaign has modified the way you perform ability checks with certain skills. Observe these changes by reading through the [[Character Skills|''Character Skills]] page. The changes also include new skills you can become proficient with. '''Spell Revisions The campaign has modified certain problematic and underpowered spells listed in official D&D sources. See the Spell Revisions page for details. Weapon Revisions The campaign has modified how weapons deal damage to portray more accessible and realism. See the ''Weapon Damage Overhaul'''' ''page for details.